Police in Venezuela used tear gas, plastic bullets and water cannons to scatter hundreds of students protesting against the government Thursday, while President Hugo Chavez’s supporters celebrated the 18th anniversary of his failed coup as an army officer.
Hundreds of London Underground maintenance workers went on the first of a series of 24-hour strikes Friday morning in protest over new roster arrangements. They will continue to cause disruptions at the same time every Sunday from February 14th until the dispute is resolved.
The entrance to Kaiser Permanente’s Moanalua clinic in Hawaii was briefly shut-down on Thursday when protesters from Local 5 staged a sit-in. Kaiser employees and Local 5 members came to rally for a new contract that they say won’t out-source union work.
In Pakistan, political and social organizations continued a country-wide strike and protest this weekend against the deadly blasts in Karachi.
Cuban police harassed and briefly jailed some 35 political dissidents last week in the eastern city of Camaguey, a Cuban human rights group said Friday.
The news from Pakistan seems to be getting worse by the day. On Wednesday, a massive bombing in the Lower Dir district killed 7, including 3 US soldiers disguised as Pakistanis, and wounded at least 130 others.
The day before, the US launched the largest coordinated drone strike inside Pakistan to date. According to Pakistani authorities, 9 drones fired 18 missiles, killing at least 31 people. This strike was the latest in an unprecedented wave of recent attacks. Just last month, for example, there were a record 12 strikes in the country, a nearly threefold increase over last year.
To protest the increasing use of drones in war, a group of activists with Peace of the Action unfurled a banner last month (video above) at a military unmanned aerial vehicle exhibit in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC, reading “Drones Kill Kids.” This action is but the latest in a growing campaign against the drones, which we’ve been keeping close tabs on.
A protester has a banner around his head that reads ‘Let the people judge’ during an anti-corruption protest in front of the parliament building in Jakarta last week. Lawmakers are conducting an investigation of the government’s $730 million bailout of Bank Century in 2008, which the demonstrators opposed.
In Albany, New York, a rally was held on Monday over plans to allow for natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale in upstate New York. Critics say the drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” could contaminate the water supplies of New York City and other areas of the state.
Police officers in Balochistan (Pakistan) staged a sit-in on Monday to protest the fact that their salaries haven’t been increased.
The Cairo Public Transportation workers are starting a strike in all the Cairo garages, at 6am today, demanding the modernization/replacement of the obsolete buses and spare parts, raising allowances related to work hazards, increasing bonuses, reforming the health services, and calling for the formation of a free union, independent from the corrupt state-backed NDP-run Egyptian General Federation of Trade Unions.
Three anti-coal activists in West Virginia have entered their fifth day of a tree-sit on Monday as part of an effort to shut down a mountaintop removal site run by the mining giant Massey Energy. The three activists are perched atop platforms on trees on Coal River Mountain.
British graffiti artist Banksy popped up with 4 new murals on the Regent’s Canal in London last week, one of which was this protest of global warming denialism.
Hundreds of demonstrators rallied on opposite sides of an Israeli-Gaza border crossing on Thursday to protest at the blockade of the strip imposed by Egypt and Israel. In Gaza, about 100 international activists staged a rally with some 500 Gazans, chanting and carrying signs denouncing the blockade. A small number of anti-Zionist, Orthodox Jews were among them.
Internally displaced people at a campsite in Nakuru, Kenya demonstrated along a highway to protest their poor living conditions following the onset of rains and demanded building materials.
Thousands of people in Hong Kong took to the streets on New Year’s Day to demand full democracy in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. The Chinese government ruled in 2007 that the territory cannot directly elect its leader until 2017 and its legislature until 2020.
A ‘day of mourning’ was observed across Sindh on Tuesday, including a general strike in Hyperabad, in protest against the killing of over 40 people in a suicide attack on the central procession of Ashura in Karachi on Monday.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has called on consumers to boycott Coca-Cola for four hours a day in support of soft drink workers picketing in Pretoria. This follows a march by 700 Amalgamated Beverage Industries (ABI) workers, affiliated with the Food and Allied Worker’s Union (Fawu), at the company’s Pretoria plant on Tuesday following collapsed talks with management. 3,500 Fawu workers are already on strike, and may soon be joined by an additional 4,500 workers.
Several Jordanian families began a hunger strike on Monday and said they would appeal to Amman’s governor through the Arab Organisation for Human Rights (AOHR) to erect a tent in front of the Iraqi embassy in Amman to call for the release of their family members who are imprisoned in Iraq.
The streets of Qom, Iran’s holy city and the center of its religious life, filled with tens of thousands of mourners on Sunday. They came both to honor a founding father of modern Iran, Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, and to protest the government he had come to oppose.
In New York City, students left school early on Monday in a walk-out to protest the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s plan to stop giving students free Metrocards. The youngsters left school at 2 pm and gathered in front of the MTA’s headquarters to demand that the agency find a way to fill its $400 million budget shortfall that won’t force students to pay to commute to city schools.
Some 300 municipal staff began a sit-in at the Town Hall in Alcoy, Spain on Monday against the local government’s decision to sack nine workers, saying they will remain there until this afternoon.
Over 5,000 indigenous, Afro-Colombian and farming community members are occupying the community center of Piñuña Negro in the department of Putumayo, Colombia. A crowd of all ages has gathered at the highest government office in the area—the Police Inspector’s office—to demand negotiations with local and national government representatives and an end to military and paramilitary harassment and coca eradication programs that are causing thousands of residents to be displaced.
The Islamabad Bar Association (IBA) on Saturday protested near Sihala police training college in Islamabad to urge the government to expel the US private security company Blackwater, which lawyers said was operating inside Sihala college.
Nearly 30 actions took place at EPA regional offices, JP Morgan Chase branches and other pillars of support for mountain top removal on Friday, as part of a national day of action. 14 activists staged a sit-in at EPA headquarters in Washington for nearly four hours, but left without incident.
A group of activists from Rainforest Action Network Toronto took part in a nation-wide campaign against Royal Bank of Canada on Saturday, setting up a coffee shop in front of RBC headquarters with seating so that passersby could stop and talk about the bank’s funding of the tar sands.
A group of climate change activists in Canada managed to breech Parliament security and disrupted a debate session last week, vowing to conduct “climate flash mobs” across the country each Monday to pressure Parliament into action on global warming.
Hundreds of activists and reporters gathered in central Moscow on Saturday for an unsanctioned human rights protest, where they chanted “Freedom!” and “Respect the constitution!”. At least 50 people were arrested.
Last Thursday, 54 people were arrested in nine different cities around the country at sit-ins in front of the offices of health insurance companies. The actions were organized by Mobilization for Health Care for All. Their next nationwide day of action will be October 28th.
On Saturday forty New York human rights advocates rallied at the Madison Avenue jewelry store of Israeli settlement mogul Lev Leviev to demand that Israel release jailed Palestinian boycott activist Mohammad Othman.
More than 600 convicted prisoners went on hunger strike in Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore on Friday to protest the excessive burden of work as they were unable to pay illegal gratification to the new jail administration.
Thousands of people descended on Capitol Hill Tuesday to rally for immigration reform. The protest coincided with the unveiling of a new immigration reform bill from Democratic Congress member and Immigration Task Force Chair Luis Gutierrez. Rallies were also held in at least twenty other cities Tuesday as part of a national day of action.
As the congressional debate continues, single-payer advocates are planning a national day of action today. The group Mobilization for Health Care for All says more than 700 people have signed up to risk arrest by holding sit-ins in front of insurance company offices nationwide. So far this month, over thirty people have been arrested at similar actions in cities including New York, Philadelphia and Chicago.
Labor unions are calling for an island-wide strike and a march near the capital today to protest government layoffs in Puerto Rico, where more than 20,000 public employees have been dismissed as the island struggles to pull out of a three-year recession.
In India, around 200 farmers from 20 villages around Halvad continued with their indefinite hunger strike on Wednesday to protest the ban on water for irrigation from Narmada dam.
Several hundred UC Berkeley students took over the anthropology library for 24 hours this weekend to protest UC-wide budget cuts, in particular Saturday closures of small campus libraries that students use for studying and research.
Dock workers at the main Greek port of Piraeus, who walked off the job on October 1, on Tuesday extended a strike against the concession of container facilities to Chinese transport operator Cosco which has caused a massive goods holdup.
Hundreds of Saudi women students held a rare protest at a university over alleged corrupt admission policies. After being turned away on admissions day at Taif University, south of the holy city of Mecca, the female students held a sit-in and blocked streets and the entrance to the university.
Around 45 workers occupied Orchard Lodge, the only secure children’s unit in London, after a meeting in which they were told the building in William Booth Road, Anerley, was closing.
About 24,000 members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in Toronto – which includes workers in child care, public health, emergency services, garbage and recycling, social services, planning, permits, inspections, water and sewage treatment, parks and recreation, and animal services – enter the 27th day of their strike for a new contract today.
Medical students in India gave up their protest and fast, which led to more than 30 hunger strikers being hospitalized over the last two weeks, yesterday afternoon after Health Department officials assured them that their demands for increased stipend would be met.
650 workers at the UK Lindsey oil refinery were fired after taking part in a strike last week. They are now pledging to burn their dismissal letters in a mass protest on Tuesday.
14 anti-coal activists were arrested at a mine in West Virginia last week for scaling a 150-foot-high excavating machine at a mine owned by Massey Energy and unfurling a huge banner that read “Stop Mountaintop Removal.” The action shut down operation for several hours.
Thousands of protesters clash with police in Iran over the weekend after President Ahmadinejad declares victory in an election that supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi say was rigged
Protests continue in Peru after the Congress temporarily suspends the two controversial land-use laws that sparked the protests and civil disobedience over two months ago
